Olga: The Grand High Witch
by meganelizabeth15
Summary: In Roald Dahl's classic book, "The Witches," Grandma mysteriously lacks a left thumb due to an ill-fated encounter with the Grand High Witch. Here, is a first-hand account of what may have happened to the young boy's dear grannie...


By the will of my deceased parents, Grandma and I were forced to start packing up to return to England, one dreary Norwegian day. Grandma, for one, had been particularly moody about the move, endlessly puffing away at her cigars and mumbling superstitions of leaving home. Grandma, as I learned, had never left her beloved Norway: a fact that I attributed to both her devoted love for her country, and an unfounded suspicion of any place outside its borders. "Heaven shall take my soul, but Norway shall keep my bones," was Grandma's longstanding mantra, and being forced to stray from her Nordic roots at the frail age of 80, was apparently something she was not very keen on doing.

"But Grandma, I'll show you all the things I've told you about! You can meet crotchety old Mr. Ratchetsmith on Elm Street, and his screeching Parrot, Squak! Imagine what fun we will have making stories of what happens in that mean old man's house! It'll be a hoot!"

"What happens in that house is NOT what concerns me, Luke," Grandma sternly replied. "What concerns me is living in a land where the cruelest of the world's witches roam freely... and that you are ill-prepared to live among that society without my constant supervision."

"But Grandma, you've already told me everything I need to know! Look, I can tell you! Witches have flashing purple eyes, blue spittle, and clawed hands..."

"And their-"

"And their feet are like squared ice blocks, and their wigs cover bald splotchy heads! Grandma! Everything will be fine, you'll see for yourself! Besides, you've never even been to England to know any better and-"

At this moment my grandma slammed down here cane, and glared at me in a way I had never seen before. She furrowed her brow, and moved closer to me, her grey lace robe slinking along the old wooden floor. "Do you know, Luke, how your dear grandmother knows about these witches, mmm? Do you know how she discovered those things you THINK you understand so well?"

Grandma grabbed me by my shoulder with her right hand and directed me towards the sofa. She lit a candle and her pipe, and blew a foggy cloud of smoke that seemed to circulate around her face. "I never told you Luke," she paused, "the story of the day I met Olga, the Grand High Witch. Did I, now?"

My grandma stared intently at her hands, caressing the absent space where her left thumb formerly had been. Grandma never told me the story of how she lost her thumb, nor did I dare ask, but I knew the story was connected to the witches she deplored, as she had a tendency to look at that particular spot of her left hand anytime she spoke of them. Grandma had often told me stories of witches, as she was a bonafide witchophile in her youth, and typically these stories fascinated me as much as they frightened me: it was as if I wanted to believe in witches as much as I wanted to believe my grandma was clearly off her rocker. But I never believed the story of Grandma's missing thumb would ever be told, because it would make witches as real as her four fingered hand.

"Now, as you remember, I wasn't but eight years of age when I first began discovering the clues of witches. It began in my third year class, when a particularly friendly nurse began signing reports for your dear Grannie to return home to mum. Each day I would visit the nurse- Olga, as her alias turned out to be- and each day she would sign the form stating I had not had any allergic reactions that day. Olga would slyly smile and say, "Come to me, lovely child, " and she'd reach for my forms with perfectly pressed, gloved hands, signing her signature, stamping them for authenticity, and sealing the envelopes using a dainty, water-soaked sponge. Olga was wretchedly cordial, and curiously attentive to each child: each time I simply had to have a form completed, Olga would record my height, weight, and a mysterious measurement she labeled as "DDB." Children in the school actually very much adored Olga, as she was always doling out sweets and goodies to whichever child didn't deserve them... but I could always sense something more sinister lurking beneath the veneer of her white nurse's jumper, and the sneer on her remarkably happy face.

One day, I forgot my lunch, and your great granny delivered it to the school's front office for me to retrieve. I was wandering down the empty hall, when I heard a horrible sctratching sound, reverberating from Olga's office. I slunk towards her doorway, and peered in... to see the most horrifying thing a pair of young eyes could ever see. There, hovering over her desk like wrangled gargoyle, sat Olga- but it was Olga in quite different form. Her typically white gloved hands were naked and exposed, revealing two sets of gnarled, deformed claws: five twisted fingers on the right, and four on the left. Olga clasped an envelope with her left "hand" if one could call it that, and used her right to sloppily jam a sheet of paper withtin it. Olga lowered her still perfectly coiffed head toward the envelope to lick and stick it shut... but when she opened her mouth, a gargantuan blue tongue poured out from from her lips, and landed on the surface of the desk. Olga dragged her weighted blue tongue across the head of the envelope, her tongue creating the horrifying "scaaaaaaaatch"ing sound that was emanating from the room.

I stood in Olga's doorway, breathless and terrified, watching to see this monstrous creature's next move. Olga, or whatever she or it was, slimily went about her work, flopping her massive tongue from report to report and splattering them with a blue ooze that stuck them all together. She worked slowly and with what seemed like pained effort- I noticed her nostrils expanding and deflating to the size of grapefruits, with each labored breath. I watched mesmerized by what I once thought was the school nuse: a monster, a dragon- what was she?

Suddenly, the phone rang and I gasped! Olga looked up from her work, her eyes flashing a magnificent fuscia, then magenta, to purple- all in the blink of an eye! Our eyes locked for several seconds, before Olga quickly put her gloves back on, and answered the phone: "Good day, this is Olga speaking, how may I help you?" She stared at me, maniacally, before I ran to the front office, where I promptly called my mother to report that I was ill, and needed to be home.

Now, Luke, you and I both know how very little people believe in witches. Your late parents were a prime example of unfortunate non-believers, and you see, my mum was the same. After telling my mum what I had seen in Olga's office that day, she punished me for chastising a woman of medicine and accused me for making up a silly story to get out of going to school. Repeatedly, I pled my case... but by the following day, I was back among my classmates... and Olga.

At the end of the day, my teacher gave me my usual form to take to the nurse's office to be signed. I winced, and asked the teacher if she could simply sign it for me. "Nonsense, Helga, go to Olga at once! And please tell her how beautiful her message was in the parent's newsletter this week. Marvelous, just marvelous what that woman is doing..."

I trudged down the hall, desperately hoping for a miracle to intervene and change my fate. As I approached her doorway, I closed my eyes and heard, "Come to me, lovely child." My stomach dropped, and I choked on the suddenly dry air.

Olga, perfectly poised, coiffed and pressed as usual, went about taking my measurements, and asked about my day. "Sweet child, I see you went home early yesterday. Your mummy said you were white as a dead fish when she came to retrieve you."

I swallowed. "Yes, I felt ill, but... am feeling much better now."

"Is that so?", she hissed, her eyes flashing with wild intensity. Olga delicately reached for my hands, examining each finger with prolonged curiosity. She handled each finger with her soft, satin gloves, gazing at them adoringly and with care. Suddenly, her grip tightened around my thumb and when I looked up, my eyes were met by the monster's of yesterday.

"As you know, I am needing one of these. Don't worry, sweet child, it won't hurt any more than a sound night's sleep. " Then she winked, and I never saw Olga again.

The following morning, my thumb was gone. No one could explain my thumb's sudden disappearance except me- "It was Olga, she had four left fingers and needed a thumb! She is a monster, and she took it!' My family, my friends, doctors, all thought my explanations were completely ludicrous, which they were, considering they had not seen what I had seen. From that moment on, I promised to seek the truth of these monsters- witches, as I came to identify them- and that truth still eludes me, in the dusk of my old age."

I sat and watched Grandma puff away, her eyes closing with the exhausting memory of what she just told me.

"But Grandma... what was DDB? The measurement you didn't know?"

Grandma smiled at me, exhaled a cloud of smoke and whispered,"Dog's Dropping Barometer. If we are going to England you best never bathe again."

And finally one of us was finally looking forward to the move.


End file.
